Xiaobao took a deep breath and began to act.
“My dad said I have to stay here obediently. Once he’s finished with what he’s doing, he’ll come over from the cars ahead.”
The woman’s hands, which had been straightening the clasp on her black leather bag, froze in midair.
“Your dad is on this train too?”
“Mm-hmm!”
Xiaobao nodded vigorously, his large eyes sparkling.
“My dad brought several uncles with him. They’re in the hard-sleeper cars up front. They’re all wearing green uniforms, and they have guns tucked into their belts!”
He shaped his fingers like a pistol, accompanying the gesture with sound effects. “Bang! Bang!”
“My dad said children aren’t allowed to sit in the hard-sleeper cars, so he told me to wait here with Mom. He’ll be over in a little while.”
He delivered the whole speech with perfect clarity, even pronouncing a term like “hard sleeper” distinctly.
The flesh on the woman’s face stiffened. She forced out a smile, but the fingers resting on her knees twisted tightly together.
The man could no longer sit still. Bracing himself against his knees, he stood up.
“I’m going to the bathroom.”
He turned and walked toward the connection between the cars.
His pace was neither hurried nor slow, but he was heading straight for the cars ahead.
He was going to scout the place.
Xiaobao lowered his head and fiddled with the hem of his clothes, seeing through everything.
He was betting on one thing—the old green trains of this era were bound to have people in military uniforms aboard.
As long as the man saw even one person in a green uniform up ahead, the whole group would be scared out of their wits.
The instant the man left, Xiaobao slid down from his seat and shuffled over to the little girl. Tilting his head, he looked at her.
“Auntie, your daughter doesn’t seem very happy.”
“She’s just carsick.” The woman answered quickly, a trace of impatience in her voice.
“Does she miss home?” Xiaobao blinked. “My dad said that if you meet an unhappy child outside, you should find a police officer to help.”
The woman could no longer keep her expression under control.
“There’s no need. We’ll be home soon.”
Xiaobao drew out an “Oh,” then stood obediently in place and said nothing more.
He slipped a hand into his pocket, his fingertips pinching the piece of ginseng rootlet Grandpa Ginseng had given him.
Its skin was wrinkled and it looked no different from a dried tree root, but a thread of genuine spiritual energy was sealed inside it.
Before they had left, Grandpa Ginseng had repeatedly warned him that it could refresh the mind and preserve a life at a critical moment.
Clutching the rootlet, Xiaobao pretended to be playing like an ordinary child and waved it beneath the little girl’s nose.
A faint thread of spiritual energy entered through her airways.
For dealing with an inferior sedative, that much spiritual energy was enough.
The little girl’s eyelashes trembled violently.
Then the fingers that had been hanging limply caught hold of the armrest. Her knuckles rose sharply.
The woman’s expression changed drastically. She barked, “Stop fooling around!”
She raised her hand and was about to swat Xiaobao’s arm away.
Clang—
The metal door at the connection between the cars opened.
Cold wind poured in, and a burly man in a military jacket strode into the car.
His shoulders were exceptionally broad, his back and waist held perfectly straight, and his lower body was steady and grounded. One glance was enough to tell that he was a seasoned fighter who had been tempered in the military.
He was a stranger looking for a seat.
Xiaobao’s thoughts spun. He walked straight toward the man and grabbed him by the hem of his clothes.
“Uncle! Do you know my dad? My dad wears clothes like that too!”
The middle-aged man stopped and looked down at the little boy, who only came up to his thigh.
His name was Old Zhou. He had been discharged from the army three years ago and was returning to his hometown to visit relatives. He hadn’t found a seat on the train, so he had been wandering through the cars.
Old Zhou grinned and crouched down to look Xiaobao in the eye. “Your dad’s a soldier too? Which unit is he with?”
“I don’t know the name of his unit, but my dad is a regiment commander! And he has a gun!”
Xiaobao grabbed Old Zhou’s arm with both hands and dragged him toward his seat, chattering nonstop all the while.
Old Zhou followed the force, letting the child pull him around.
The male trafficker returned from the cars ahead, his footsteps hurried.
He had really seen several people in military uniforms in the hard-sleeper cars up front. He had just wiped away the cold sweat covering his forehead and was preparing to return and take everyone away.
Then he looked up and stopped dead.
A burly man in a green military uniform was standing beside his seat, talking with that four-year-old boy.
The man’s legs went weak, and he nearly fell to his knees in the aisle.
Gritting his teeth, he hurried over to the woman. He bent down as though he were tugging at the luggage and forced a single word through clenched teeth:
“Withdraw.”
The color drained completely from the woman’s already pale face.
She snatched up the black leather bag and slung it over her arm. With her right hand, she seized the little girl’s wrist and yanked hard.
“Niuniu, we’ve arrived. Hurry up and get off the train.”
The spiritual energy from the ginseng rootlet had cleared much of the fog in the little girl’s mind.
Her eyes darted wildly in their sockets. Her cracked lips trembled nonstop as she desperately tried to make a sound, but her throat could produce only a hissing rush of air.
Xiaobao had been watching that side the entire time.
The moment had come.
“Uncle, look!”
Xiaobao pointed at the little girl’s feet. His clear childish voice exploded through the narrow train car.
“This big sister’s shoes aren’t the same size! She has a black cloth shoe on the left and a green rubber shoe on the right! Was she snatched by bad people? My dad says traffickers don’t even give children proper shoes!”
Old Zhou followed his pointing finger.
The black cloth shoe on her left foot was two fingers’ width too large.
The green rubber shoe on her right foot was so tight that it had rubbed the skin raw at her heel, where threads of blood seeped out.
A real mother and father would never do this.
Old Zhou straightened his back, his fierce gaze stabbing into the woman’s face like a knife.
“Comrade, is this child your biological daughter?”
The woman’s eyelids twitched violently, and she pulled even harder on the little girl.
“What nonsense! If I didn’t give birth to her, did you? Mind your own business!”
“What’s her name? How old is she? What’s her zodiac sign?” Old Zhou fired off three questions in succession, pressing forward step by step.
The woman was left speechless. After stammering for a long while, she managed to spit out three words:
“Her name is Niuniu…”
“What’s her full name?” Old Zhou thundered.
The woman could not answer.
Old Zhou reached out and seized the woman’s wrist, pressing his thumb down on her pulse point.
It was a military restraint technique, applied with enough force to dislocate bones and sever tendons.
The woman cried out in pain, and her arm went slack.
The black leather bag crashed onto the metal floor of the train car. Its mouth sprang open, and a small unlabeled bottle of brown medicine rolled out with a clatter.
Old Zhou stepped on the bottle and threw back his head, shouting,
“Everyone, lend a hand! We’ve got traffickers! Child snatchers!”
His cry stirred up a storm.
In those days, travelers hated nothing more than scum who trafficked in women and children.
Several steel mill workers in the seats to the left immediately flipped up the table boards.
The farmers crouching in the aisle to the right grabbed their shoulder poles and stood up.
Even the young men who had been sleeping soundly on the luggage racks leaped down, landing on their feet as they rolled their sleeves up to their shoulders.
Seeing that the situation had turned against him, the man flung the woman away and spun toward the train-car door.
He took enormous strides, but the aisle was cluttered with sacks piled every which way.
The back of his foot caught on a bamboo basket. He lost his balance and slammed onto the floor in a spread-eagle position. The crisp crack of his nasal bone breaking rang out.
Blood smeared across the floor.
Two broad-shouldered workers pounced on him, wrenching his arms behind his back while driving their knees fiercely into his lower back, pinning him down until he howled like a slaughtered pig.
“Run! Go on, try running now!”
The woman was still struggling in Old Zhou’s grasp, her hair disheveled as she argued desperately.
“This is a misunderstanding! She really is my daughter!”
Xiaobao crouched down, stuffed the remaining half of the ginseng rootlet into the little girl’s palm, and closed her fingers around it.
That cool spiritual energy coursed through her meridians.
The blockage in the little girl’s throat burst open.
Her hoarse voice rang out with startling clarity through the noisy train car.
“I don’t know her…”
The woman’s legs went limp, and she collapsed to the floor.
Several train attendants hurried over after hearing the commotion. The moment their handcuffs flashed, they locked the two traffickers to the railing.
The conductor looked at the blood covering the man’s face and the bottle of sedative on the floor, his face livid.
“At the next stop, hand them directly over to the railway police stationed there. Investigate this to the fullest!”
The disturbance subsided.
The little girl was taken to the dining car by the attendants, where they gave her water and comforted her.
Old Zhou sat back down in the aisle and watched Tushan Xiaobao climb back into his seat.
“Kid, how old are you really?” Old Zhou asked, his voice full of disbelief.
With just a few words, the boy had forced the traffickers into a dead end, then precisely used Old Zhou’s military uniform to borrow its authority. Even Old Zhou, a veteran reconnaissance soldier with eight years of service, had never seen a four-year-old with so many twists and turns in his head.
Xiaobao straightened the clothes that had been rubbed askew during the commotion.
“Four years and three months.”
Old Zhou shook his head and laughed. He untied the cloth bag he carried with him, took out two warm boiled eggs, and set them on the small table.
“Keep these for your mother, to help her regain her strength.”
Xiaobao thanked him earnestly, then carefully gathered the eggs together with several apples.
In the seat beside them, Tushan Yao was still asleep against the train window.
The commotion in the car, which had nearly raised the roof moments ago, had not even made her change positions.
Xiaobao took out a segment of tangerine he had peeled earlier and brought it to her colorless lips.
He pressed it lightly, and juice spilled out.
Tushan Yao’s lips instinctively parted a crack and closed around the tangerine segment.
Xiaobao exhaled a puff of warm air and tucked the collar of Tushan Yao’s loosened old cotton-padded jacket back into place.
The green train clattered and rumbled along the tracks at full speed, while the sky outside darkened completely.
The northern plains were bleak and piercingly desolate beneath the night. In the distance, vast patches of lamplight gradually appeared.
They would arrive in a little over thirty hours.
At the rear of the train car, the male trafficker’s nosebleed had finally stopped. His face was bruised purple and blue, and his nasal bone was probably broken.
For the rest of his life, he had been brought down by a little child. He would not even have the face to meet his fellow inmates.